Being locked down, quarantine, whatever, I’m not able to get out and do tours… The good news is that I am getting a few things checked off my “to-do” list in the office. And it is a very long list! One of those things was to find where the late Las Vegas headliner Redd Foxx was buried.
Redd Foxx Does Vegas
For those of you of a certain generation. More specifically my generation. Redd Foxx was the man who influenced the comedic talents the likes of Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. For those younger people, he was Fred Sanford, of the tv show Sanford and Son. He also played in a show called The Royal Family.
<< Redd Foxx on Amazon >>
Growing up, my older brother had a Redd Foxx album and I can remember as a teenager listening to it and loving it. So when I started to come to Las Vegas as an adult, Redd Foxx was either at the Stardust or at the plaza, I can’t remember which one but he was headlining at and that was the first Vegas Adult Show that I went to. And he did not disappoint. He was as raunchy live on stage as he was on the record albums!
Redd died of a heart attack on the set of “Royal Family” in 1991. He was 68 years old. It was reported that Eddie Murphy is the one who paid for his funeral because Redd was literally broke.
When I first moved to Las Vegas, I used to actually live near his old home and drove by it almost daily. So I figured today would be a great day to finally do a”catch-up” on him and go out to the Palm Mortuary, to find his grave. You know it’s his because it has the Red Fox on it. What I did not know until I saw the gravesite, was that two years later his mother passed away and she is buried right next to her son.
Las Vegas and Redd
In the 1960s, Redd was performing a lot on the Las Vegas Strip, so he had a house built here and he lived here off and on until the end. Las Vegas was and is his final residence. Although popular on television and with live shows, Redd was not good with money and was always broke. So to help with that, Redd had a store. The Fred G Sanford New and Used. Redd sold some of his stuff out of the store. But he used it more for his fans!
In 1989 the IRS came calling. Apparently, Redd never paid taxes on his $4 million dollars in income the past few years and the IRS wanted close to $750,000 in back taxes, fees, and interest. They pretty much cleaned him out. Just about the only thing they did not take was the clothes he was wearing and an old 1951 pickup truck he had parked outside the store. Yes, same the pickup truck that was the one used on the television show Sandford and son. It was last sold on eBay in 2014 for $28,000.
[adinserter block=”11″]Not Leaving Las Vegas
After Redd had passed away, his house was bought by an Elvis impersonator Jesse Garron. Jesse and his uncle lived there for a very short time before moving out. Subsequent owners had the same issue. Moving in than moving out quickly afterward. It seemed Redd had not left the building! Redd, they found out from a medium, also was not happy with changes they had made to his home and let them know this by turning lights on or off, opening doors, and other strange things.
The house ended up in the hands of a real estate office and they figured out how to make Redd happy. In Redd’s world, he is still living and headlining in las Vegas. Coming home at 2 or 3 in the morning, wanting to grab a beer out of the refrigerator in the kitchen and then sitting out by his pool to relax. In our world, the pool is gone, as well as some other changes in the way the house is laid.
So there is now a red fox on the sign out by the street and they leave the lights on in the kitchen when they leave at night. If they forget, or someone new is working in the office and is the last one to leave, forgetting to leave the lights on, Redd will leave them a mess to clean up when they open the office in the morning.
So yeah, some people love Las Vegas more than others! Some actually refuse to leave Las Vegas! Ya’ Big Dummie!!
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